


We Could Be the Aurora Borealis (In this Cold, Cold Room)

by sunflcwers



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Astronomy, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Historical References, M/M, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26816089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflcwers/pseuds/sunflcwers
Summary: My feelings for you always rise and fall. Sometimes, I am caught midair, where I am no longer terrified of the plummet downwards. Where I feel like gravity won't hold me back.This is first and foremost a love story.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 34





	1. Binary Stars

In astronomy, a binary system is composed of two stars that are bound by a shared gravitational link; moving together in an orbit in such a way that could only be matched by their binary companion. 

_“We could go off together,”_ Crowley had said, the coppery taste of desperation fresh on his tongue. He remembers clearly the last time he felt this helpless; he remembers the boiling sulfur enveloping him as he was propelled from grace into a bottomless pit of fire and brimstone. _I didn't mean to fall, he would say. I just sauntered vaguely downwards._

To him, Alpha Centauri seemed like the perfect sanctuary. Rigil Kentaurus, the first half of that binary star, was the brighter of the two. Crowley could never admit that it strangely resembles Aziraphale's halo, or the way the desert sun refracted against the angel's wings years back in the Garden of Eden. Toliman always followed suit; the reddish-orange star sequence orbiting around its other half like its life depended on it. 

_Go off together? Listen to yourself,”_ Aziraphale replied, but he could hear the longing in the space between his words. _I need you._ He wished he'd said. _Please don’t leave me, you’re all I have._ (My feelings for you always rise and fall. Sometimes, I am caught midair, where I am no longer terrified of the plummet downwards; where I feel like gravity won't hold me back.)

But Crowley should have known just how quickly things could fall apart. He was not a stranger to this powder keg— this ticking time bomb. The rejection was inevitable. Aziraphale once warned him that they were not living at the same pace. 

If only he had listened.

“Crowley?” A soft voice called out to him, grounding him back into reality. “My dear, are you alright?” The demon stirred, swallowing thickly as he realized he was in his Bentley, with the angel by his side. That evening at the bandstand was behind them. They had just dined at the Ritz. _After all was said and done, the forces of gravity still pulled me back to you._

“Yeah, I’m here,” he mumbles, clearing his throat as he parks the car in front of the other’s bookshop. “Sorry, don’t worry 'bout it.”

Aziraphale laughs (an anxious, little laugh). “I've been doing so for eons, my dear. I don't think it's a habit I can quite get over.”

“Hm, fair enough,” he quips, leaning against his seat before glancing back at the other. “But is there anything I can do to ease your worries?”

The angel pauses for a moment, but his fingers drum restlessly against his lap. “Well, um. Could you perhaps come inside? I still have some _Chateau Lafitte_ hidden away at the back. I think it will be to your liking.”

Crowley could tell the other was nervous; he was fidgety, a slight stutter under his breath. “Tempting,” he teases, trying to cut the heavy tension settling between them. “Sure. Whatever you’d like, angel.”

As they head into the shop, he tries to convince himself that things are different this time. No more doomsday to think about. No more Hastur and Ligur trailing after his every move. No more bookshop engulfed in flames. _We stopped Armageddon; I could do with a bit of hope_ . But fear can just so easily rear its ugly head. He was still cursed, still fallen. Broken, with bitter ash stained on his wings. _Unforgivable, that’s what I am._

Even now, Crowley still feels like he doesn’t deserve this. If he was Toliman, the slightly smaller and dimmer star, Aziraphale was the ever-bright Rigil Kentaurus. Back when they had first met, he recalls seeing the angel standing on that wall and looking more radiant than the sun. At that time, he wasn't sure if it was a glimpse back into heaven, or a sullen reminder of what he had lost. So far away and unreachable. 

A lowly serpent, a demon. A dying star that had burnt itself out after trying to reignite for so long. (Even so, you make me feel like I can burst into light again.)

But Aziraphale is not the sun, and he is no longer the serpent in the Garden. Instead, they are here: in this bookshop in Soho, sitting together on the sofa with glasses of wine in hand. Crowley finds himself moving even closer. He could never quite resist. Binary stars obey Kepler’s laws of motion, after all, and spin around in an orbit with nothing to tether to but each other. _Perhaps, love has always played a role in the celestial mechanics._

“There is something I need to tell you,” Aziraphale finally brings up, placing his own glass of wine to the side. They were accustomed to sitting across from each other, with just enough distance between them for the sake of propriety. But this time he opted to sit beside him on the couch— already indicative of a step forward he was willing to make. “But I just can’t seem to find the words. You’d think, after six thousand years of knowing each other, I’d know the right things to say.”

"Take your time, angel. Where do you want to start?"

He takes a deep breath. "The very beginning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, this is my first fic in a very long time, and for a ship I absolutely adore. If you stumble upon it, I hope you like it! I'll be updating this semi-regularly, with chapters varying in length depending on what needs to be said for that part of the story hehe. 
> 
> Twitter: @starrysheen


	2. Paradise Lost

Aziraphale could see flashes of light flickering in the horizon. The sight of mere atoms combining little by little to form rock, and soil, and sea springing forth as God created the universe.

In the beginning, there was the Word. But before that, there were the angels. They had helped Her, of course. Mapping out the skies and stars to their own devising. Being creatures of love, they were passionate in their craft. Gabriel made the Milky Way, and Uriel helped design every constellation visible from earth. In contrast, Aziraphale was never the best angel back in heaven. He could never quite master the skills of creation. Rather, he was more of a romantic— opting to sit back and enjoy the show.

Crowley, on the other hand, was an artist. In every sense of the word. All the angels knew of his work, and even from afar, Aziraphale was utterly mesmerized. With a snap of his fingers, he could bring into existence a brilliant display of colors they had never seen before, which seemed to encompass the entire night sky. _The Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. All because of him._

He was known by another name back then. A name Aziraphale was never truly acquainted with, despite the many times they almost crossed paths. It's a wonder that they didn't meet until that day in the Garden. Before the fall, they merely coexisted. 

_Momentary bliss._ That’s all it was, before the Great Rebellion. And nothing could have ever prepared them for the fallout. He had heard things beforehand. Rumors of some struggle strewn across the many legions of angels. Lucifer was unhappy, they said. He was talking to all the brightest angels and enticing them to revolt. 

“This paradise is nothing but a façade!” Aziraphale heard the former archangel’s voice boom across the heavenly plane. “Once She creates the humans, She will cease to love you.” His words were met with both gasps of horror and revering eyes; a testament to how doubt was already starting to fester among them. This fragile kingdom, this house of cards. 

But the rebellion was doomed to fail from the very start. The scripture says: _“God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment.”_ Every angel that was associated with Lucifer was thrown down into Gehenna. Crowley was one of them, and the very image still burns at the back of Aziraphale’s mind. (They say that the higher you rise, the harder you fall. But not like this, please. Not with him.) Years later, he’d picture that day again through the stories of Icarus and Daedalus, of Achilles in the Iliad, and of Jatayu and Sampati in _Ramayana_. All cautionary tales of hubris in the midst of glory. Crowley had been the first. 

Life in heaven shifted in the aftermath. The scent of scorch and bloodshed lingered in the air, thick and palpable, almost suffocating. The battle had shaken them. These creatures of love had tasted the fruits of war, and so the seeds of the apocalypse were already starting to take root. 

And so the Great Plan commenced in a garden; with temptation, and a single red apple— a rupture from blissful ignorance. (Knowledge will destroy, they were told. The very knowledge that the angels had all along. Perhaps, then, the rebellion had always been part of this grand scheme.) All of which led to this moment, with an angel and a demon standing side by side on the parapet.

 _“They just said go up there and make some trouble,"_ the demon muttered, sounding awfully resigned. The angel looked at him curiously. For all intents and purposes, the latter did look diabolical. His dark hair and soiled clothing. His yellow serpent eyes. Who he once was appeared unrecognizable. 

Still, Aziraphale already had a feeling that there was something that put him apart from the other demons. There was a common denominator among all hell things. They were all creatures of dank and rot. Bodies scorched and burned. Remnants of the Fall. But it wasn't dark ash that crept over this demon's wings. _No_ , it was pure stardust.


	3. Mesopotamia, 7th century B.C.

In present time, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. Many historians refer to it as a desert bloom of lush flora built by a king as an act of love for his wife— a sweet story set during the rise of civilization. 

They had gotten it all wrong, though; it was never in Babylon in the first place. Instead, the gardens were situated three hundred miles up north in Nineveh, the capital of the once great Assyrian Empire. Aziraphale and Crowley knew this, of course, having been there when the gardens were built all those years ago. It was another chance meeting, with the demon bumping into him after accomplishing another quick temptation.

The angel was no longer surprised by their countless encounters, realizing quite early that they were bound to see each other a lot while on Earth. (Despite himself, he had to admit that it wasn’t so bad having a familiar face around through the centuries. At least at a respectable distance, of course.)

“Fancy seeing you here, Crawly,” he chortled, a bit more fond than usual. On a regular day, he would have been a bit more apprehensive; he knew better than to fraternize with someone from the opposite side. But there was something nostalgic about this moment in particular.  _ Funnily enough, it reminded him of Eden. _

This place was a pensile paradise. A seemingly eternal oasis in an otherwise dusty, barren landscape. Here, the two of them stood side-by-side from a first-level terrace, where a new batch of fruit tree orchards were just starting to grow. Aziraphale couldn’t help but gush as his eyes trailed over all the trees, and vines, and shrubs that flourished all across the man-made mountain.

“It’s so beautiful here,” the angel whispered, beaming with excitement. “If only I had the skills to recreate it for myself.”

The other gave him a peculiar glance. “Y’know you can just miracle it into existence.”

“But that wouldn’t be as satisfying, would it? The toil of planting can be wondrous too.”

“Huh. Never pegged you as a botanist,” Crowley replied, bemused. He did understand the sentiment, though. He picked up the habit of gardening a few years back, whenever he needed to stay in one town for a longer period of time. Though he couldn’t quite imagine the other doing the same. 

Aziraphale laughed, shaking his head. “I actually do love plants, and herbs. I’d do a terrible job of taking care of them myself, though. I suppose I’d just love to see something like this again, one day.”

The demon blinked hard, the slightest smile curving on the corner of his lips. “Well, I’ll let you know if I ever come across anything of the sort.”

“That is if we bumped into each other, my dear.” 

_ Oh, that is new.  _ He had never used a term like that before; the demon knew better than to miss it. And despite the angel's words, it sounded very much like an invitation.

“Well,” he shrugged, lips pursed in thought as he played along. “Wouldn't be that bad if we did, once in a while. Actually, it would make it easier for us to do our jobs. Especially for all my wiles you'd have to thwart.”

Aziraphale nodded, eyes betraying his interest. “I suppose so… but strictly for professional matters, of course. I'm holding you accountable for that garden.”

“It's a promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> really sorry for the late update. :( got busy for a bit, and since this is my first fic in a while, i've been anxious about this whole thing. i hope you like it though. <3


	4. Italy, 1605

Crowley watched from afar as a group of guards marched across the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti. He was looking out the window to try and catch a glimpse of the Boboli Gardens, which served as a breath of fresh air from the rusticated stonework of the palace, and the Tudor houses that otherwise took over the Oltrarno Neighborhood.

Of all the various periods of history, he couldn't help but adore the renaissance. Especially the one that transpired here, in the heart of Florence. Italy was the home of many patrons of the arts and sciences. Some of the most notable men of the time, Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Michelangelo, were born and built their legacies in this very city. 

This was, of course, a stark contrast to the brutality and horrid  _ dampness _ of the fourteenth century. Between the dark ages and the bubonic plague, he witnessed humanity in its most miserable state. There was a deep and unnerving focus on penance, and perdition that followed if you failed to atone for your sins. A constant reminder Crowley could very much do without.

All throughout Europe, the renaissance period served as a rebirth from all the tragedies of the olden times. A testament to hope. To something other than eternal damnation.

So he invited Aziraphale to meet him here, in the Palatine Gallery, where the greatest Italian artworks of the time were amassed for the private enjoyment of the renowned Medici Family. Well, with the exception of a certain angel and demon, that is. 

It had been a few hundred years since they began their little arrangement. An agreement to help each other out when needed, under the conditions that they would first decide upon. (An excuse to invite him over for lunch, or a drink, or a stroll along the corridor of a renaissance palace.)

“You're late,” Crowley stated matter-of-factly, sensing his companion’s arrival just by the latter’s footsteps on the room's marble flooring.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this. We’re technically _ trespassing _ !” Aziraphale whispered as he made his way towards the other, enunciating the last word with what sounded like a whine. 

Crowley waved off any concern, instead beckoning him over to walk with him without any further delay. The guards were to make their rounds in half an hour, and they could do without getting caught in the act.

“S'not a problem, angel. They won't even know we're here,” he reassured him, leading the other through one of the many hallways of the gallery. 

There was a method to the madness in the way the Medici Family displayed the art they collected. They weren't arranged in any chronological sequence nor organized by any particular style of art. Rather, the grand rooms of the Palatine Gallery were categorized as if they were guided by the ancient gods of Greece and Rome. In all honesty, Crowley assumed that Aziraphale would be more excited. Everything was decorated in high baroque design, something that very much appealed to the angel.

“You always trick me into doing the most absurd things, my dear. Just a few years back, I don't know how you got me to leave Christopher Marlowe at that inn without so much as paying that bill. Maybe, if we had stayed, he wouldn't have—”

“Hey, that whole debacle wasn't my fault!" the demon interjected, raising his hands defensively. “We don't know for sure  _ why  _ he died. And besides, I know for a fact that you wanted to leave too.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, sighing that all-too familiar sigh whenever he would just acquiesce to whatever Crowley was saying. This kind of banter comprised much of their relationship; a domestic sort of thing, a semblance of normalcy he had started getting used to. And that secretly terrified him. 

They had finally made their way into the ballroom of the palace. A luxurious room adorned with masterpieces inspired by both bible and myth. It was here, right at the other end of the room, that they saw it. It felt like they were making their way to this particular painting the entire time. 

‘The Fall of the Rebel Angels’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, made in 1562. A classic depiction of mutually-assured destruction. The rebellious ones lost, but heaven was never the same again. 

“Do you remember that day?” The angel asked, transfixed on the ricochet of angels painted on the panel. A picturesque portrayal of the Fall from Grace.

“Yeah, it didn't go like that at all,” he murmured in response, sounding somewhat lost in thought. “It is brilliant, though.” It was something he could not deny. Crowley has always been an artist, after all. 

“I didn't know you were this passionate about the arts, my dear.” Aziraphale's voice was soft as he glanced back at him. He's seen the demon like this before: without a care for any snarky or snide remark, completely and utterly withdrawn.

Crowley hummed in response, giving a half-hearted shrug. “I've liked it since back then.” 

“Back then?”

“I meant when I was an angel. Always had a fascination with colors. Even made the Northern Lights because of it, but I doubt any of them remember.”

A pause. A few minutes of thick silence as everything dawned on the angel. Aziraphale, in all honesty, could only remember the story of creation in fragments. Just bits and pieces of the beginning, when his own sentience was still being formed. But he had always trusted himself to remember  _ him _ . Angels and demons, while beginning from the same essence, have come to be on opposite sides of the spectrum with very evident distinctions. Perhaps the angel that Crowley once was had an entirely different disposition altogether, yet he should have noticed the same droll in his tone. That glimpse of flaming red hair.

“My dear, that was you,” he began, panic evidently rising as he spoke.

“Doesn't even matter,” the demon said dismissively, offering a sad smile. “We still have our agreement to talk about, don't we?”

All he could do was nod. Crowley wasn't ready for this conversation, and neither was he. Soon enough, they will be confronted by the things they've always left unsaid. _ Oh, the words we're not saying hold such a terrible weight. _

(Newton’s first law, properly called  _ inertia _ , explains that the tendency of an object to stay at rest or in motion will only cease if acted upon by another force. It then makes sense that the only means of escape from the gravitational influence of a binary star would be for it to be shoved out. Aziraphale wasn’t sure if this was a further push into their perpetual orbit, or the very thing that could drive them apart—  _ the law of inertia had yet to be discovered when this little dance began. _ )


End file.
